A)     Aim

The CS/CISSP aims to encourage clinicians to participate in healthcare research by providing salary support for their research time, contributing to the pipeline of clinician researchers. The salary support funding is currently channelled to the respective clinical departments in recognition of their support for the clinicians' participation in research, with the flexibility for the department in using the funds for research-related activities in the department.

B)     Eligibility

The applicant must be a Singapore Citizen or Permanent Resident, a clinician (MD/MBBS/BDS) registered with the SMC/SDC and has a clinical appointment in a local public health institution.

All research must be conducted in Singapore at a public research institute, hospital, medical centre or medical school.

The applicant must be the clinician Principal Investigator (PI), co-PI or Co-I of the healthcare research projects which are competitively awarded and administered by NMRC and related to human subject recruitment.

The NMRC project must already be awarded, and with an end-date on or after 1 May 2021 without a request for grant extension.

Applicants who are already salaried under the NMRC grants and programmes (e.g. PIs of STaR, CSA and TA) are not eligible to apply for salary support under CS/CISSP.

Applicants must spend 0.1 – 0.6 FTE in the clinical research project.

Update: PIs of National Health Innovation Centre (NHIC) grants with project start dates from 1 September 2019 onwards are eligible to apply for salary support of 0.1 – 0.30 FTE. The applicant must also meet the rest of the CS/CISSP eligibility criteria.  

C)     Review Criteria

Applicants must complete the application form provided and provide a transparent, specific, and detailed account of their functions/activities and recruitment timeline. Applicants should also ensure that their requested FTE support tallies with the activities they indicate and that their requested period of support aligns with the project milestones of the tagged grant project.

Review will be based on an evaluation of the following:

• The reasonableness of the hourly estimates for specific functions
• The clarity of the functions/activities and whether the CS/CI functions could be better completed by others

Applications that fail to provide a detailed account of the time and functions/activities that would align with the requested FTE support would be deemed not fundable.

D)     Award

The funding of CS/CI’s salary (including fringe benefits and allowances) will commensurate with the declared and approved FTE.  The computation of the FTE funding will be based on the Clinical Grade and the respective Annual Salary Cap as follows:

Table 1: NMRC Annual Salary Cap based on Clinical Grade

The clinical departments will be awarded consolidated funding amount for successful applicants within the department, based on approved FTE spent on research (i.e., within the grant period). 

Fundable items that could be listed in the departmental plan include the following:

1. “Backfilling” of the CS/CIs’ clinical duties;
2. Expertise and scientific collaboration related to the clinical research project to include biostatisticians and bioinformaticians, site-monitoring, data analysis and management, and training of CRCs;
3. Other research-related support costs that help in the clinical research project.

The items must be in accordance to NMRC Grant Terms & Conditions.

The funds are not to be used as direct monetary incentives to the CS/CIs or to cover any costs relating to routine clinical care/services. 

For reimbursement of the CS/CIs’ research time, the institution should submit claims via IGMS with supporting documents (e.g., CS/CIs’ monthly payslips), to NMRC on a quarterly basis.  Consolidated funding of the approved research time/FTE support will be reimbursed to the respective CS/CIs’ Departments through the Institution (i.e., on a quarterly basis).

Funding will cease with the grant funding of the project.  Should there be any extension of the grant, funding of the research time/FTE for the extended period will not be provided in line with the current policy of no-cost extension for all grants.

E)     Application Procedure

Applicants are required to submit the application through the Integrated Grant Management System (IGMS):

(I) IGMS Instructions

Please download the Application Guide, IGMS Guide and application templates here. 

Please ensure that the Word versions are uploaded for all templates. Templates that require signatures should also be scanned and uploaded as PDF files

• The applicant is required to create an application for each NMRC project that he/she requires FTE support for.  Multiple submissions can be made for support required under more than one project.

• For the purpose of CS/CISSP application:

  • Applicant is indicated as a “PI”. The applicant’s actual role (i.e., PI, Co-PI, Co-I) is to be indicated in the application (i.e., uploaded as supporting document).

  • The title of the application is to correspond with the NMRC project that the applicant is applying salary support under.  

(II) Instructions for the Supporting Documents to be uploaded onto IGMS

Please read the following carefully before completing the application form:

• Follow the instructions closely in every section.
• Complete all sections in the application. Indicate “NA” where a particular section is not applicable. 
• Use Calibri or Arial font size 10-11 for all text.
• Applicants with multiple appointments at different institutions are to select only one Host Institution (i.e., the clinical department) for the application.

The original signatures of the Applicant, Lead PI, HOD, & Institution Director are required. Late submission or revision to the submitted application will not be entertained after the closing date. Incomplete applications will be rejected.

F)     Submission Deadline

The IGMS closing date is 16 December 2020, 5.00pm (Singapore Time) for submission by the applicants. Please contact your research office for internal deadlines if any.